As the Islamic observance of Ramadan comes to an end, the president of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue has sent a message to the world’s Muslims stressing the duty of all believers to bear witness to the Almighty.In his message, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran says that all believers, regardless of their faith, should share in “work in favor of peace, by showing respect for the convictions of individuals and communities everywhere through freedom of religious practice. ” Enlarging on that theme, he calls for “doing everything one can to reject, denounce and refuse every recourse to violence which can never be motivated by religion, since it wounds the very image of God in man.”

Cardinal Tauran’s message makes a special point of condemning terrorism, “which strikes blindly and claims countless innocent victims, is incapable of resolving conflicts and leads only to a deadly chain of destructive hatred, to the detriment of mankind and of societies.”

The French cardinal (ohh, he’s French…) argues that dialogue between Christians and Muslims is “the tool which can help us to escape from the endless spiral of conflict and multiple tensions which mark our societies.”

Cardinal Tauran, who had served for years under Pope John Paul II (bio - news) as the Holy See’s Secretary for Relations with States– the rought equivalent of a Vatican foreign minister– was appointed in June to head the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. His appointment appeared to reverse an earlier papal decision, announced in March 2006, to combine that Council with the Pontifical Council for Culture, with a single prelate heading both offices. Informed sources said that tensions with Muslims– especially in the aftermath of a lecture by Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) in Regensburg– convinced Vatican officials that the office responsible for inter-religious talks should not be downgraded.

With all due respect, I disagree. There are Muslims who are peaceful but there are important numbers who are not. There are some of them who are supporting Al-Qaeda’s leader, Bin Laden (estimated number 130.000.000) in his war against “US and the Zionist-Crusaders”. And there are others who are supporting the creation of a mega-State, the Global Caliphate, cleaned of Infidels, like you and me. Even in huge stadiums and to everyone’s knowledge.

And then we have to count the ones who are not supporting that positions right now, but in case they have to choose between Islam/Islamists and you and me, as Infidels, they would gladly choose the first ones.

There is another point to make: all of that 130.000.000 don’t think you and me are precisely innocents, but just infidels and, as such, can be killed without any kind of regard.

Ibrahim, a scholar of Arabic studies who worked in the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, came into contact with “thousands of new books, serials, and microfilms [that] arrive yearly from the Arab world,” among which were a large number of texts dealing with Al Qaeda, and Ibrahim noticed something interesting and worth reporting upon:

Numerous Arabic books dealing with Al Qaeda passed through my hands in this privileged position. A good number contained not only excerpts or quotes by Al Qaeda but entire treatises written by its members. Surprisingly, I came to discover that most of these had never been translated into English. Most significantly, however, the documents struck me as markedly different from the messages directed to the West, in both tone and (especially) content.

It soon became clear why these particular documents had not been directed to the West. They were theological treatises, revolving around what Islam commands Muslims to do vis-à-vis non-Muslims. The documents rarely made mention of all those things — Zionism, Bush’s “Crusade,” malnourished Iraqi children — that formed the core of Al Qaeda’s messages to the West. Instead, they were filled with countless Koranic verses, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad), and the consensus and verdicts of Islam’s most authoritative voices. The temporal and emotive language directed at the West was exchanged for the eternal language of Islam when directed at Muslims. Or, put another way, the language of “reciprocity” was exchanged for that of intolerant religious fanaticism. There was, in fact, scant mention of the words “West,” “U.S.,” or “Israel.” All of those were encompassed by that one Arabic-Islamic word, “kufr” — “infidelity” — the regrettable state of being non-Muslim that must always be fought through “tongue and teeth.“

Read it all.

That’s the problem: we have 130.000.000 who believe in that creed… and very few who want to stand against that.

And by the way, this implies: a) they know perfectly well what is our Achilles’ heel. b) their war, has nothing to do with what the West does or doesn’t do, but with their ideology -looks like this is difficult to understand for some people….- and c) it’s true that not all Muslims are supporting this, but I insist again: if they have to choose between Bin Laden and Bush, who would they support? Daily Kos’ readers don’t have that very clear when they are choosing between Ahmadinejad and Bush.

Lastly, I have not changed my views: I still believe there are Muslims who do not agree with these statements, and who only want to live freely and to practise their religion without anyone telling them what they should do, but who are sufficiently scared to speak out because they know what they are confronting. But we have also to be realistic: considering that we live in a magnificent and peaceful world, where no one wants to harm us, and where everyone has good intentions, is as bad as considering every one out there is a monster. Problem: how to know who are of each kind?